Brolly.

Journal of Social Sciences 2 (2) 2019

IN SEARCH FOR THE POST-COLD WAR MODUS VIVENDI

IN POST-SOVIET EASTERN EUROPE

Tsotne Tchanturia
Lecturer at the University of Georgia, Tbilisi, Georgia;
Associated researcher at the Cold War History Research Centre,
Budapest, Hungary;
PhD candidate at the International Relations Multidisciplinary
Doctoral School at Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary.
tsotnetchanturia@gmail.com

Abstract. The end of the 20th century was marked by a rather unexpected
opening as the long-enduring Cold War came to the end and the Soviet Union
collapsed, allowing fifteen new republics to appear on the political scene. Beyond
the optimistic expectations of democratization and the expansion of free-market
capitalism through the newly independent republics, the collapse of the Soviet
Union created serious challenges for the international community in terms of
international law, politics, economy, and security. One problematic challenge,
which remains an open issue today, is the painful process of disintegration of the
multi-ethnic Soviet federal state. By evaluating the current state of affairs of the
non-NATO member, Kremlin disloyal post-Soviet states located on the western
frontier of the Russian Federation, we can see that they have become a “bone of
contention” between the West and Russia. By presenting brand new evidence
from the Gorbachev period, once top-secret meetings of the CPSU Politburo and
other Soviet governmental institutions, this article critically evaluates issues such
as Gorbachev’s grand compromises in Central and Eastern Europe and the
Russian problem in Ukraine and probable risks of its further aggravation, and tries
to draw recommendations for solving current territorial problems in the region.

Keywords: the Soviet Union, disintegration, East-Central Europe, Gorbachev,

post-Soviet states, post-Cold War modus vivendi, Russian problem, Ukraine

GORBACHEV’S BREST-LITOVSK GAME

The Berlin Wall was both a symbolic and tangible confirmation of

the East-West division. However, if its fall in 1989 indicated the end

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of these tensions and the liberation of the Central and Eastern

Europe from the Soviet dominance, it also appeared to be a bell
ringer for the challenging process of disintegration of the multi-
national Soviet federal state. To this extent, British PM Margaret
Thatcher’s sceptical expectations concerning the negative effects of
German unification on Gorbachev’s Perestroika, and warnings on the
risk of opening a Pandora’s Box of border claims through central
Europe, appeared to be essentially justified (Haftendorn 2010, 343).
Moscow’s generous concessions in Central and Eastern Europe,
which were dictated by political gridlock, embittered Gorbachev’s
domestic adversaries, leading the country to the edge of a coup d'état
in August 1991. Although unsuccessful, this practically ended all
efforts of reformation of the Soviet Union by revealing the political
instability of Gorbachev’s regime. On the other hand, whereas
central Europe, excluding the Yugoslav territories, more or less
survived the dangers of Pandora’s Box of territorial claims, the
former Soviet republics bore this problematic inheritance.
The British Prime Minister was not the only one to foresee the
probable negative effects of the fall of the Berlin Wall on the
stability of the Soviet Union. In early December 1989, while meeting
with the Federal Republic of Germany’s Foreign Minister Genscher,
Gorbachev referred to Kohl’s ten-point plan as a diktat, as he was
aware of how the unification of Germany would catalyze the
escalation of the Soviet crisis in Eastern Europe. As Haftendorn
argues, the key to Gorbachev’s concession giving up Soviet control
of the GDR most probably lays in Moscow’s financial problems, as
Gorbachev had expected the pleased FRG to finance the
modernization of the Soviet economy (Haftendorn 2010, 345).
Another serious dispute between Gorbachev and the West was over
the membership of a unified Germany in NATO. During a meeting
with US Secretary of State Baker on 18-19 May 1990 in Moscow,
Gorbachev commented that unified German membership in
NATO was impossible, as this would inflame his domestic foes and
kill Perestroika. As it appeared, however, Gorbachev was trying to
raise the price of his gridlock dictated concession, which he

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essentially achieved, as the Americans promised to sign a bilateral

grain and trade agreement with the Soviet Union and additionally
speed up the ongoing Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (Haftendorn
2010, 348-349). On the other hand, Gorbachev was promised
economic aid from Bonn at an overall sum of DM 12 billion and an
interest-free loan of DM 3 billion, which allowed the Soviet leader
to make the concession while saving face (Haftendorn 2010, 350).
It is not a coincidence that as early as August 1989, western
scholars were able to draw historical parallels between the Brest-
Litovsk Treaty and Gorbachev’s assent for grand compromises in
Eastern Europe. As Aron put it, Eastern Europe was a financial
burden that the Soviet Union was no longer able to afford, setting
the conditions for Gorbachev’s grand compromise – besides the
annual 11 to 15 billion USD normally spent to keep the region
afloat, he wrote, an additional 26 billion USD was needed annually
to maintain over half a million Soviet troops in the region (Aron
1989, 13).
In his landmark survey of 20th-century international history,
Keylor shares this same opinion, arguing that the Soviet satellites in
Central and Eastern Europe were a financial burden for Kremlin
and that getting rid of them would have allowed Gorbachev to
mobilize all available resources for the success of Perestroika (Keylor
2015, 651). Accordingly, the situation as put by Békés was a “life-
or-death fight for the survival of the Soviet Union”. It should be
noted that Békés was first to coin the term Brest-Litovsk syndrome,
indicating the state when Kremlin, for the first time since the
Russian Civil War, “found itself in a situation, in which its own
survival was at stake”, and chose to compromise its periphery for
the sake of saving the imperial “centre” (Békés 2002, 245).
According to this theory, Lenin’s motivation for accepting the
signature of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty in 1918 was to stop the further
invasion of the Central Powers by formally compromising the
western and south-western territories of Soviet Russia, maintaining
control of which was too costly for Kremlin, which created
favourable conditions for achieving Bolshevik success in the

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Russian Civil War. On the other hand, Gorbachev’s motivation for

ending the Brezhnev Doctrine in the Soviet Bloc (risking the
collapse of Kremlin’s strategically important yet too costly satellite
system in Central and Eastern Europe), was achieving stable
relations with the West by settling all international political disputes,
which would allow him to mobilize foreign and domestic resources
for the successful implementation of Perestroika and the reformation
of the Soviet Union, without which the future existence of the whole
Soviet state seemed impossible.
Gorbachev’s Brest-Litovsk game started as early as the spring of
1985. In an interview with the Spanish daily “El País,” on 26
October 1990, during a visit to Madrid, Gorbachev admitted that
Kremlin had announced the non-interventionist policy in the
internal affairs of Central and Eastern Europe five years prior
(Gorbachev 2013, 305). The credibility of this comment can be
easily confirmed by looking at Gorbachev’s televised interviews and
addresses in 1985. In an interview with Pravda on 7 April 1985,
Gorbachev noted that while building Kremlin’s foreign policy, it
was inadmissible to violate the sovereign rights of other states and
essential to consider their state interests (Gorbachev 2008a, 169). In
this interview, Gorbachev presented himself as a supporter of the
Millian concept on the margins of liberty, basically declaring that
Kremlin’s sovereignty ends where the sovereignty of other states
begins. In an address to the people of France through the French
television “TF1” on 30 September 1985, Gorbachev shared this
same opinion, declaring that the main basis for the construction of
Kremlin’s foreign affairs should be the respect for the sovereign
rights of other states (Gorbachev 2008b, 541).
By analysing Gorbachev’s spoken language, we can see that he
was even literally comparing the situation in the Soviet Union to the
“Brest Peace”. At a Politburo meeting on 2 January 1990,
Gorbachev noted that, in 1918, Kremlin had needed to make such
principled decisions that were unimaginable even for Lenin’s inner
circle, but had created the “Brest Peace” settlement. Therefore, we
should not panic and act accordingly, he said (Gorbachev 2010b,

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63). On 26 January 1990, during an inner circle meeting concerning

the German question in Kremlin, Gorbachev admitted that the
situation of the Soviet Union was the “Brest peace number two. If
we do not cope with it, half of our country will be taken away from
us again”, he said (Gorbachev 2010b, 192). In an address in the
Odesa military district on 17 August 1990, Gorbachev declared that
Kremlin’s politics in Eastern Europe resulted in the strengthening
of Soviet security. We would have otherwise appeared at the edge
of military conflict with NATO, he said (Gorbachev 2012, 379). By
looking at these comments, it is not difficult to understand
Gorbachev’s motivations behind his generous compromises in
Central and Eastern Europe.
As we discovered from Politburo archival documents, the story
went even further. On 6 September 1991, when Kremlin decided
finally to recognize the political independence of the Baltic
Republics given their specific historical foundations, Yelstin
commented that the decision was supposed to solve Kremlin’s
international problems (Gorbachev 2018, 104). Accordingly,
regardless of Gorbachev’s acknowledgement to Margaret Thatcher
that Russia could not so simply give up the Baltic region, as it had
been trying to gain access to the sea for centuries (Gorbachev 2015,
120), Kremlin decided to give up its de facto and de jure control of the
Baltic region once the integrity of the imperial “centre” came under
threat. Furthermore, if we take Cohen’s argument for granted, even
as a small number as seven republics grouped around Russia (except
the Baltic and Transcaucasian republics and Moldova) would have
been adequate to form a new reformed Soviet state – “Union of
Soviet Sovereign Republics”, as the “remaining eight […] republics
constituted more than 90 per cent of the old Union’s territory,
population and resources” (Cohen 2009, 37). If we apply this
argument to the Brest-Litovsk syndrome theory, we can argue that
Gorbachev would have been ready to compromise not only Central
and Eastern Europe and the Baltic region to save the Soviet imperial
“centre,” but the South Caucasus and Moldova too. Furthermore,
we can see that the argument of the four republic-based new Union

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was also popular among the Soviet political elite. As Cohen notes,
“according to a non-Russian leader who participated in the abolition
of the Soviet state” (most probably he means Nazarbayev), a new
Union could have consisted of four republics (Cohen 2009, 37).
We believe that what essentially appeared to be fateful for the
Soviet state was not the failure of its foreign policy, nor the failure
of the Novo-Ogarevo negotiations, but the exposure of internal
instability by the August coup. As Thatcher and Gorbachev foresaw,
German unification and membership in NATO inflamed
Gorbachev’s internal foes in Kremlin, achieving the paroxysm
during the August coup that assured the reformist forces in Kremlin
and supporters abroad of the instability within Gorbachev’s regime,
eventually shifting their de facto support to Yeltsin’s persona and
finally resulting in the signing of the Belovezha Accords and the
collapse of the Soviet Union. Eventually, as Békés notes, if Lenin
had proven to be right when compromising the Western frontiers
of Soviet Russia to save the imperial “centre,” while adopting the
same strategy, Gorbachev was overtaken by history (Békés 2002,
245).

IN SEARCH FOR THE POST-COLD WAR MODUS VIVENDI

Analysing the events of the end of the 1980s from this angle gives
us an understanding of how the fall of the Berlin Wall, undoubtedly
a victorious achievement for both the German nation and European
security, triggered brand new challenges yet again inter alia for
European security, this time more Eastwards, in its eastern
neighbourhood. Every global opening in world history creates its
own chaos of conflicts of interest, and the fall of the Berlin Wall was
no exception. What the European continent experiences now in
several spots of its eastern neighbourhood (more precisely in
Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, and Azerbaijan), is the inexistence of
the post-Cold War modus vivendi in the region, what really turns the

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respected states in this region into a bone of contention between the

West and Russia (in addition, we should also consider the growing
influence of China).
The collapse of Soviet hegemony in Europe, a remarkable
symbol of which was the fall of the Berlin Wall, shifted the Cold
War affairs eastward to the Western frontiers of the former Soviet
territory. And even if the Cold War formally ended at least as late as
December 1991, factually in many ways it proceeds on a rather
smaller, regionally localized scale in military, political, economic and
propagandistic dimensions.
This new post-Cold War Russia-West competition over
obtaining influence on the territory of six post-Soviet states of the
European Eastern Partnership is most visible when looking at the
current state of affairs in Georgia and Ukraine. Both are countries
that suffered, and still do, of military conflicts with the Russian
Federation, and which have withdrawn their memberships from the
CIS because of these conflicts. Classical elements of Cold War
affairs can be observed here, such as the blended elements of hybrid
warfare (such as political warfare, conventional warfare, irregular
warfare, and cyber warfare), even the classical geopolitical
borderization strategies, manipulation of state and non-state actors
(such as political parties, NGOs, mass media, the Church, Business
sector), etc. The classical element of the Cold War missing so far is
a missile crisis, however analysing the state of affairs in the region,
we are not convinced that the realization of this scenario is
impossible.
The new post-Cold War competition in the region is defined on
the one hand by the Russian Federation’s ambitions and efforts to
establish a new chain of post-Soviet Kremlin satellite states on its
Western frontiers, in order to redraw the new post-Cold War red
lines or at least to halt the post-Cold War Eastern enlargement of
NATO. On the other hand, the ambitions of some of the states on
Russia’s Western frontier, willing to integrate to the European
Union and NATO, along with the support in many ways of their
aspirations from the western institutions and states, primarily

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NATO and the EU, as well as the USA, establishes the current state
of affairs in the region.
Russian ties, and accordingly the Russian leverage to manipulate
the situation in the region, are tremendous: there is huge economic
dependence on the Russian market, Russian language still dominates
as the first spoken foreign language in the region, and there is a
reasonable amount of political, religious, and cultural groups and
entities with considerable legitimacy that singlehandedly see the
further development of the region only along the lines of Kremlin.
However, the most efficient Russian tools to take control of the
situation in the region are the ethnic Russian minorities and other
Kremlin-loyal ethnic minorities in these respective states. It should,
therefore, be noted that this circumstance is not artificially created,
as long as we do not consider the traditional Soviet system of
hierarchically inter-dependent nationalities to be artificial. The
collapse of the Soviet Union left up to 66 million citizens beyond
the borders of their traditional homelands, and this was a logical and
natural consequence of the collapse of the multi-ethnic federal state.
To this extent, the Russian question became one of the problematic
cornerstones of the disintegration of the Soviet Union. It was,
therefore, not surprising that, as was narrated by President George
Bush Senior in his memoirs, during an official dinner with the King
of Spain Juan Carlos on 29 October 1991 in Madrid, Gorbachev
referred to this circumstance as a “Russian problem” (Loginov
2007, 362). Due to the breadth of this issue, in this article we will be
mainly concentrated on the most relevant part of it – the Russian
problem in Ukraine and its possible effects on the integrity of the
Ukrainian state.

SOME NOTEWORTHY CASES OF THE RUSSIAN PROBLEM IN THE FORMER

SOVIET SPACE

The Russian problem has been a critical cornerstone of the

disintegration of the Soviet Union since the late 1980s. In many

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ways, Kremlin has attempted to use the Russian national minority

populations as an indirect tool of manipulating the political climate
in neighbouring countries. Besides the famous cases of Ukraine
(which will be discussed in more detail below) and Moldova, which
resulted in tremendous conflicts and crises, there is the iconic case
of Lithuania, which illustrates an ideal example of Kremlin’s indirect
and direct territorial blackmailing strategy. Luckily for Lithuania,
these efforts by Kremlin turned out to be unsuccessful.
What happened is the following: once the Lithuanian Union
republic decided to secede, at least three different parties –
Belarusians, Russians, and Poles – activated territorial claims to
Lithuania. Belarusians demanded the return of five south-eastern
Lithuanian districts granted to Lithuania from Belarus in 1940 by
Stalin – this demand was officially posed by the Belarussian
government as well, although it was later recalled. The population
of the Kaliningrad Oblast demanded the return of Klaipeda, and the
Poles residing in Vilnius asked Kremlin to take the areas of their
residence under its control. This threat was to be realized if
Lithuania continued the process of secession. Gorbachev spoke
about these issues while meeting with President Bush in Novo-
Ogarevo on 31st July 1991 (Gorbachev 2017, 184). It is technically
problematic to accuse Kremlin of making up of these territorial
claims, however considering Moscow’s behaviour in Vilnius during
the events of January 1991, and elsewhere (in disloyal neighbouring
countries), during the Gorbachev period and afterwards, it is not
difficult to identify the traditional “handwriting” of Kremlin.
Besides the Lithuanian case, there is also a rather understudied
case of the Russian problem in Kazakhstan. On 26th August 1991,
Pavel Voshanov, the press secretary of the president of the RSFSR,
stated at a briefing with journalists that Russia supported the self-
determination of every republic; however, it also reserved the right
to raise the issue of reconsidering borders. In response to the
question from journalists on whether Voshanov could name the
countries whose borders might be reconsidered, he mentioned
Crimea, Donbass, and North Kazakhstan. These comments

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triggered sharp reactions in Kyiv and Alma-Ata. The sharp reactions

were handled by drawing up communicates between Russia and
Ukraine and between Russia and Kazakhstan. The Russia-Ukraine
communique was drawn up on 28th August and the Russia-
Kazakhstan on 29th August. Vice President Rutskoy paid visits to
Kyiv and Alma-Ata. The communicates inter alia touched upon the
mutual respect of territorial integrity (Gorbachev 2017, 600-603).
Concerning the above-mentioned incident, in his conversation
with German Foreign Affairs Minister Genscher on 9th September
1991, Gorbachev stated that Kazakhstan and Ukraine were
frightened by Yeltsin’s statement on reconsidering borders
(Gorbachev 2018, 145). He mentioned that if the situation moved
towards separation in Ukraine and Kazakhstan, it could end up in
tremendous conflict (Gorbachev 2018, 140-141). Gorbachev also
commented on this incident in a conversation with President Bush
on 29th October 1991, during the meeting in Madrid. The statement
aggravated separatist tendencies in Ukraine and talks on imperial
claims have again been restored, noted Gorbachev. It has forced
Nazarbayev to make a statement condemning any kind of territorial
claims, noted Gorbachev further (Loginov 2007, 356).
This episode in Russo-Kazakh relations, what we metaphorically
like to refer to as a demonstration of Russia’s clutches, depicts the
Russian Federation’s leverage over the political climate in
neighbouring Kazakhstan. If the Kazakh government were to
attempt to pursue, or somehow imitate, the “Ukrainian way” of
disloyalty to Kremlin, it should be no wonder that the frozen issue
of the Russian problem would be activated there. Accordingly, it is
not surprising that the position of the Kazakh government
concerning Crimea reflects the interests of Moscow.

THE RUSSIAN PROBLEM IN UKRAINE

In studying the topic of current territorial conflicts in the former

Soviet republics, we find it crucial to focus on the basic aspect of
these problems during the Gorbachev era. It was the time of the

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“end of the Soviet Union” when multiple ethnic conflicts surfaced,

and to this extent, this exact period of Soviet history is abundant
with data that compose the cornerstone of the current state of
affairs in the region. Accordingly, we are assured that if one is willing
to conduct comprehensive research on the current territorial
conflicts in the former Soviet republics, a complete picture of the
developments could not be constructed without delving deep into
the 1985-1991 Soviet nationality politics. This whole process of
historical investigation into the Soviet past is somehow like the
conduction of anatomical pathological research on the Soviet body,
the important findings of which might cure the modern-day diseases
of the former Soviet republics.
Since its transfer to Ukraine in 1954, Crimea had more or less
remained under the radar until as late as July 1987, when the first
demonstrations by Crimean Tatars were held at the Red Square in
Moscow. The first such demonstration was held on 6th July 1987
with the participation of 120 delegates. The demonstration’s motto
was “Bring Crimean Tatars back to their Homeland! Democracy
and Openness to Crimean Tatars!”. At the Politburo meeting held
on 9th July 1987, Lukianov noted that 350,000 people stood behind
this demand (Loginov 2007, 18).
It is interesting to have a closer look at the opinions concerning
the status of Crimea presented at the abovementioned Politburo
meeting. Solomontsev recalled the moment Khrushchev handed
Crimea over to Ukraine, noting that this decision was not received
with great admiration in Russia. Sevastopol is certainly a city of
Russia’s glory, he said. He suggested referring to the decree signed
by Lenin to return Crimea to Russia. Do we try to follow Lenin’s
path in our lives? Then we must bring this decree as evidence and
no one will remain annoyed, Solomontsev stated. In response,
Gorbachev noted that it would be correct from both historical and
political standpoints to return Crimea to Russia (Gorbachev 2008c,
593-594), but Ukraine would oppose the move (Loginov 2007, 19).
Vorotnikov suggested the postponement of this subject for the time
being. It would be too much trouble to experience another

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“Ukrainian problem”, he said. Yakovlev offered to uphold a 15 to

20-years transitional period for resettlement from Uzbekistan to
Crimea. Gromyko stated that there was not much to worry about it,
saying, let us leave this problem to be settled by life and history. In
final remarks, Gorbachev noted that if Crimea were to be returned
to Russia, it would trigger additional unneeded challenges, as it
would weaken Slavic unity in the “Socialist Empire”. He suggested
the establishment of normal living conditions for Crimean Tatars in
Uzbekistan and, additionally, a delay in the process of their
resettlement back to Crimea (Loginov 2007, 20). At the Politburo
meeting on 6th August 1987, Gorbachev commented that the idea
of turning Crimea into a Russian “federal district” was worth
attention, but it could not be fulfilled suddenly, without the support
of the people’s will (Gorbachev 2008c, 367-368).
As we can see from the above-cited excerpts from Politburo
meetings, even Gorbachev was considering the idea of returning the
Crimean Peninsula back to its historical Russian homeland,
however, considering Kremlin’s options at that time, he chose, as
was stated by Gromyko, to leave the problem for settlement by life
and history.
By examining the Politburo documents, we can understand that
Crimea and Donbass were demanding that Moscow review the
internal borders of Ukraine - Chebrikov discussed this issue at a
meeting on 27th April 1989 (Gorbachev 2010a, 559). Kharkiv’s
population immediately raised the same separation demands when,
on 6th June 1989, Ukraine adopted a new law diminishing the status
of Russian to the language of intra-national communication, noted
Gorbachev on the issue at a Politburo meeting on 4th October 1989
(Loginov 2007, 96). As far as the issue of separatist aspirations of
Kharkiv’s population is concerned, it worth recalling a comment
from Gorbachev in an interview with the Belarusian “People’s
Newspaper” on 28th November 1991, in which he reminded the
public that Kharkov (in the case we use the Russian toponym) was
joined to Ukraine by the Bolsheviks in order to gain a majority in
the Rada (Loginov 2007, 412).

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At a meeting with the participants of the XXIst Congress of

Komsomol on 10th April 1990, Gorbachev stated that when public
movements had raised the issue of language in Ukraine, a collection
of signatures had started in Crimea to request the return of Crimea
to Russia. Half a million signatures were collected, he said; the same
happened in Donbass where 11 million Russians were residing
(Gorbachev 2011, 212).
During a visit to Sweden, in conversation with Swedish PM
Ingvar Karlsson on 6th June 1991, Gorbachev noted that it would
be sufficient in Ukraine to pressure the Russian speaking population
for disagreements to simultaneously arise in several places.
Gorbachev said that in Crimea, where there are many Russians, two-
thirds of the population had voted for autonomy and that the
situation was quite acute in Donbass. If the developments were to
carry on the same way, Ukraine might remain with nothing but
Galicia, he noted (Gorbachev 2015, 204).
While talking with President Bush in Novo-Ogarevo on 31st July
1991, Gorbachev noted that when Ukraine began talks on
independence, Crimea had announced that it would prefer to join
Russia. Moreover, stated Gorbachev, it was recalled at the Donetsk
Basin that after the revolution, the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Soviet
Republic had been founded there. People considered it possible to
raise the subject of renewing the Soviet Republic, he said
(Gorbachev 2017, 184).
We can discover from the official documents that, besides
Crimea, Donbass, and Kharkiv, the Odessa and Nikolaev (currently
Mikolaev) Oblasts also have a history of separatism from Kiev.
Following Ukraine’s declaration of independence, a delegation of
the Donbass Strike Committee arrived in Moscow on 25th August
1991 to state that if Kyiv were to tolerate separatist moods, then
Donbass would go on a total strike; Odessa and Nikolaev joined
their demands shortly thereafter (Gorbachev 2018, 556).
In an interview with a Ukrainian TV Company on 8th December
1991, Gorbachev declared that the violation of national minorities’
rights would begin in Ukraine if it were to separate from the Soviet

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Union. “I greatly desire to retain Ukraine in the way it is right now,

but I am sure, if it steps forward for separation, then the processes
generating there, will be… The situation of Yugoslavia has plunged
me in thought” (Loginov 2007, 429).
From the above-presented excerpts of the archival documents,
we can understand that the populations of Crimea, Donbass,
Kharkiv, Odessa, and Mikolaev were in many ways expressing their
discontent for Ukrainian separatism from Kremlin, and most of
them were demanding the joining of their territories to Russia as
early as the late 1980s and early 1990s. Accordingly, it is not a
coincidence that almost 30 years later, the Crimean peninsula would
be annexed by the Russian Federation, the Russian satellite Donetsk
and Lugansk self-declared separatist republics would take off in the
Donbass region and groups of separatists would attempt to establish
a Krakiv People’s Republic. Most probably, it was neither a
coincidence that as early as December 1991, Gorbachev was
considering realistic the risk of the realization of the Yugoslav
scenario in Ukraine. By reviewing the above-presented information,
we can definitely see that unsurprisingly, Russia’s traditional
geopolitics have not changed so far.
Ethnic composition and the ratio of Russians to Ukrainians in
the regions of Ukraine also shed light on the current state of affairs
in the country. According to the most recent 2001 population
census, the currently problematic regions of Crimea, Lugansk, and
Donetsk demonstrate the highest ratios of Russian ethnic
populations. In Crimea, ethnic Russians compose 58% of the local
population, whereas Ukrainians make up only 24%. In Lugansk, the
ethnic-Russian population composes 39%, whereas the Ukrainian –
58%. 38 to 57 is the ratio in Donetsk. The next Ukrainian region
with the highest share of ethnic Russian population is Kharkiv (26
to 71), and subsequently Zaporizhzhia (25 to 71) and Odessa (21 to
63). The Russian-Ukrainian ratio in the Mikolaev region composes
14 to 82, which is similar to the composition of Kherson. Only the
Dnipropetrovsk region has a higher ratio of ethnic-Russian to
Ukrainian population (18 to 79) than the latter two (State Statistics

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Committee of Ukraine 2003-2004).

Taking into consideration all above-presented data, we can
suppose that if Russo-Ukrainian relations do not achieve a
functional modus vivendi, the successful settlement of which is being
attempted by the Normandy Four, it will not be surprising if, aiming
to put more pressure on Kiev, Moscow intensifies its hybrid warfare
in the regions of Kharkiv, Odessa, and elsewhere with comparably
significant shares of ethnic-Russian populations. Most problematic
to this extent could be the Kharkiv region as, recalling the above-
presented comment from Gorbachev, it was within the composition
of Russia for centuries and was joined to Ukraine by the Bolsheviks
only in order to gain a majority in the Rada.

CONCLUSION

Considering the current state of affairs in Ukraine and in other

Kremlin disloyal post-Soviet states on the European Eastern
Partnership territory, we are assured that the pragmatic position of
these “states of contention” is essentially important for achieving a
credible post-Cold War modus vivendi in the region. Taking into
account the real options these states have today and analysing
historically proven efficient strategies and methods of solving
similar problems, we are convinced that the most credible example
they can follow is the path of Willy Brand’s Ostpolitik. As far as the
current position of these respective states towards their problematic
regions is concerned, it is somehow identical to the Hallstein Doctrine.
Total non-recognition of the adversary party is indeed a principled
position, however, the question is whether these states are ready to
bear the price of this position, as these territorial disputes put a great
burden on their economic and social development. To this extent,
we argue that the only credible way out should be to imitate Willy
Brandt’s Ostpolitik, rather than what appeared to be a doctrine of
Walter Hallstein.
We are therefore assured that the only path to genuine

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Tsotne Tchanturia – In Search for the Post-Cold War Modus Vivendi

independence, and the restoration or maintenance of the principles

of individual liberty and free institutions in the region, rest largely,
as was mentioned in the Economic Cooperation Act of 1948, “upon
the establishment of sound economic conditions, stable
international economic relationships and the achievement […] of a
healthy economy” (Hitchcock 2010, 158). On the other hand, the
establishment of long-lasting economic stability is almost
impossible under the conditions of active or “frozen” conflicts in
the region. It is therefore clear that some kind of stable modus vivendi
must be achieved for the disputed territories between all interested
parties, which will make way for a real economic recovery in the
region.
The governments in official Kyiv, Tbilisi, and elsewhere in the
region, and their respective populations, should understand that if
they desire to pursue the “European way” of development, they
should arm themselves with pragmatic policies and, to some extent,
get ready to recognize the interests of breakaway entities and the
Russian Federation. To this end, Willy Brand’s Ostpolitik and Lenin’s
grand compromise in Brest-Litovsk are not that different, as both
leaders pragmatically recognized the existence of a problem and, by
wanting or not wanting it, made significant compromises that
allowed their respective states to move forward.

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